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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

ZOMG datagasm!

Holy macaroni, I have a GPS watch with a heart monitor that can go in the water and holds more than one workout and does a thousand magic things!!! Not only that, but it's THE ultimate triathlete's brain-in-a-box that counts and beeps and vibrates and makes sure it knows when you fall in a ditch or ride in a hot air balloon and you go pee and need to eat.

The Garmin Forerunner 910XT - my precious, you are mine!! Hubbs definitely knows how to treat me. I only said the word once after reading all possible GPS watches reviews on DC Rainmaker's blog and decided that there was no better than this - but I wasn't expecting to get it in this life anyway, you know, we've got a mortgage to pay. However, since we didn't have to pay for car insurance this month, it must have somehow fit in our budget. I'm not going to complain, I could not have asked for a better gift, it's our 15th anniversary this year after all.

After proper unboxing activities, I read all 12 quick start manuals (manuel de demarrage rapide, manuale di avvio rapido, schnellstartanleitung, guia de inicio rapido, manual de inicio rapido, snelstartgids, lynstartvejledning, skrocony podrecznik uzytkownika, aloitusopas, hurtigstartveiledning and snabbstartshandbok) to make sure that I covered it all, pushed all buttons that I could push before giving my fingers a cramp, pinned the charger clamp on its shiny body and plugged it into the wall, then watched the battery level raise slowly from 54% to 100%.

As soon as it was ready (I may have slept a few hours in between), I took it for a ride drive on my way to work that is, then hooked the ANT gizmo to the computer, downloaded all software clients, drivers and agents and finally the firmware update for the watch. Eventually, everything was set and registered and ready to munch on data, so I went out for a 25 min lunch walk and later in the evening, for an hour bike ride.

It's awesome!! Plug the ANT gizmo in, workouts go out and straight on the Garmin website. Another click in the TP Device Agent and they are on Training Peaks website too. This is too easy to be true! Finally I no longer need a computer with a microphone that can listen to crappy modem sounds via Sonic Link to download the ONE workout that gets saved in the antique Polar S410 HRM. I probably don't need to fire RunKeeper either, although it's great for the real time tracking, not yet available on the Garmin website.

On Thursday, I'll be taking it to my swim workout, I can't wait to see how it performs in the pool. Ok, I am also dying to know how straight I swim in open water, so the weather will decide which one it'll be.

But for now, allow me to go have my datagasm while I play back my workouts. Ohhh, yeaaaah!!